Inventor of cochlear implant dies

NEW YORK TIMES

Updated 4:35 pm, Saturday, December 15, 2012

Dr. William House, a medical researcher who braved skepticism to invent the cochlear implant, an electronic device considered the first to restore a human sense, died on Dec. 7 at his home in Aurora, Ore. He was 89.

House pushed against conventional thinking throughout his career. Over the objections of some, he introduced the surgical microscope to ear surgery.

Tackling a form of vertigo that doctors had believed was psychosomatic, he developed a surgical procedure that enabled Allen Shepard, the first American in space, to travel to the moon.

Peering at the bones of the inner ear, he found enrapturing beauty.

Even after his ear- implant device had largely been supplanted by more sophisticated - and more expensive - devices, House remained convinced of his own version's utility and advocated that it be used to help the world's poor.

Today, more than 200,000 people in the world have inner-ear implants, a third of them in the United States. A majority of hearing-impaired children receive them at an early age, and most people fitted with the implants learn to understand speech with no visual help.